They want you to believe it's you who's causing climate change

While billionaires and the companies they run have spent years insisting that climate change either doesn't exist or is overblown, they've known the reality of the situation for a long time. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, for example, used to donate to the Seasteading Institute, which aimed to build floating cities in order to counteract rising sea levels. And Exxon Mobil allegedly knew about climate change in 1977, back when it was still just Exxon and about 11 years before climate change became widely talked about. Instead of acting on it, they started a decades-long misinformation campaign. According to Scientific American, Exxon helped create the Global Climate Coalition, which questioned the scientific basis for concern over climate change from the late '80s until 2002, and successfully worked to keep the U.S. from signing the Kyoto Protocol, a move that helped cause India and China, two other massive sources of greenhouse gas, to avoid signing.

Even when Republican lawmakers show flashes of willingness to get something done, they're swiftly swatted down. There are myriad examples, but one example comes via Dark Money, where [author Jane] Mayer describes an incident in April 2010 when Lindsey Graham briefly tried to support a cap-and-trade bill: A political group called American Solutions promptly launched a negative PR campaign against him, and Graham folded after just a few days.

  GQ

Lindsey folds as a matter of character, I think.

American Solutions, it turns out, was backed by billionaires in fossil fuel and other industries, including Trump-loving casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

[...]

[T]here is no "free market" incentive to prevent disaster. An economic environment where a company is only considered viable if it's constantly expanding and increasing its production can't be expected to pump its own brakes over something as trivial as pending global catastrophe. Instead, market logic dictates that rather than take the financial hit that comes with cutting profits, it's more reasonable to find a way to make money off the boiling ocean. Nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than the burgeoning climate-change investment industry. According to Bloomberg, investors are looking to make money off of everything from revamped food production to hotels for people fleeing increasingly hurricane-ravaged areas.

And they pay a fraction of the taxes you pay (as a percentage of income)

And speaking of Sheldon Adelson...

[Trump's 2016] campaign accepted $25 million from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. And when Sheldon called after Inauguration Day, Trump was there for him.

Specifically, the president agreed to make “increasing the global market-share of Sheldon Adelson’s gambling empire” a top-tier priority of American foreign policy toward Japan.

For years before Trump’s election, casino magnates had been eyeing that nation with unrequited lust: Thanks to its stringent anti-casino laws, Japan was one of the last untapped markets for exploiting gambling addicts on planet Earth. One month after Trump painted the Rust Belt red, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe pushed a bill legalizing casinos through the legislature. The new law allowed for the provision of just three casino licenses in the entire country — guaranteeing their recipients local monopolies.

Thus, in February 2017, Adelson flew to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with the new president, and the Japanese prime minister. And after Adelson pitched the Japanese leader on his business, Trump went in for the close.

Adelson still hasn’t secured one of Japan’s coveted casino licenses. But on a recent earnings call he told investors, “[W]e’re in the No. 1 pole position.”

[...]

ProPublica goes on to detail Adelson’s influence over other aspects of the Trump administration’s governance, including his transparent role in shaping its (extraordinarily hostile) policies toward the Palestinians. Less well known, though, is Adelson’s success in persuading the EPA to devote a portion of its limited funds to studying his billionaire friend’s mediocre water technology. The Israeli start-up Watergen, owned by Adelson pal Michael Mirilashvili, makes machines that can extract potable water from the air. In his first weeks as EPA director, Scott Pruitt met with Watergen’s executives at Adelson’s behest, and then promptly pushed for the agency to strike a deal with the company that would allow the U.S. to study its technology

  NY Magazine

Pretty sure I have one of those in the basement:  I call it a dehumidifier.  A little disinfecting or boiling and filtering, and that water would be potable, too.

And just like Trump, Adelson thinks doing weird shit to his hair will make him look young (or hip? or vibrant?  not sure what they're going for). Neither one of them apparently ever takes a good look at their own face.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.